Dark Ambient Review: Heterodox

Review By Casey Douglass

A horror unfolding is often a double-whammy. You first have the shock of whatever it is, and then, quite often the insight comes that things are actually far worse than you initially thought. A world fifty years after an alien invasion is just as fascinating as another that is only just being conquered. What horrors will the first generation born during an alien occupation have to accept as normal? This is the kind of realization that Josh Sager’s dark ambient album Heterodox explores, the long-tail effects of the worst kinds of darkness, inspired by the soundtracks of some of the best movies of our era.

Opening track The Plague Doctors is one of my favourites on the album. There is a distant thunder-like sound, one accompanied by an almost jaunty pulsing rhythm. Static looms, with an impression of rain and a metallic squeal or shimmer. I half felt that I was listening to the softened sounds of traffic passing in the street. A ghostly vocal begins, and deeper vibrating tones around the midpoint, before things build to a climax and then slither away. For me, this track could have been a score to a film, one in which the opening scene shows a crowded, rainy pavement, with everyone moving in one direction besides a strange hooded figure that is eerily floating against the flow. A very pleasing and ominous track.

The second track is also one of my favourites: A Dread of Something Abnormal. It begins with a rotating resonance and a thrum surrounded by fuzz. It feels a bit sci-fi, the flares of higher tone leading me to think that this might be what an angel strapped into the large hadron collider might sound like. There are various swells and knockings later, and a buzzing that changed the angel mental image for one that evoked the happenings of The Fly film. This is a floating, roiling and pressurized track, one that reeks of science and technological power plucking at the workings of things that it should probably leave alone.

The final track that I wanted to mention by name is Monsters Make Monsters. This is a different kind of track, opening with echoing piano notes, notes that begin to twist and warp against a growing windy background. As the track continues, there is a low buzz, a swarm-like feel, hinting at massive industry that bodes ill for anyone nearby. The low, vibrating swells of tone and relaxed echoing beat that join confirm this feeling. This is the track where someone is out for a midnight walk and finds a meadow overrun with thousands of strange insects mating in the moonlight. Sinister.

Heterodox is another fine dark ambient album from Josh, one that, as the album description mentions, is a fitting sequel to his earlier release Interlopers. While the previous album felt more “abandoned industrial estate after a catastrophe”, Heterodox for me, lays out a more varied smorgasbord of threat. Some of the tracks suggest desolation, others some kind of lurking danger, and others still, more abstract feelings of delving into the gaps between realities. If you like your dark ambient ominous, technology-infused and desolate, you should check out Heterodox.

Visit the Heterodox page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Heterodox

Album Artist: Josh Sager

Released: 28 Sept 2021

Dark Ambient Review: interlopers

Review By Casey Douglass

I think that some of the best horrors take the sights and sounds that we see every day, and introduce some unsettling element to them, something that corrupts them and forces us to look at things differently. This feeling lingers even when we are done with the film, show or book, and when we next see a similar object, we get echoes of those feelings. Josh Sager’s dark ambient album interlopers would provide a great soundtrack for such a tale.

The interlopers album art makes me think of invaders from other dimensions, or maybe humanity has finally made the weapon that will cause its own extinction. The metal structure and the chopped edits give rise to ideas of a mashing of worlds, or a clash of strange energies. The ubiquity of these kinds of structures, or similar ones such as pylons, in the developed world at least, drags these feelings into the realm of the everyday. The album title: interlopers, and the various track names, such as “auger spires” and “when mountains walk” really cemented these ideas for me, which the music then confirmed with gusto.

The first and titular track “interlopers” gives a great broad taste of what I felt. It opens with a fizzing, punching double beat, a windy drone blowing behind it. A buzzing electronic tone pulses out a simple melody, a high bird-like tone and a howl-like wail occasionally sounding. There is even the chime-like clinking of what could be milk bottles being left on a doorstep. This track brought such images to mind as an angry sky, a building storm, litter strewn streets and grit covered windows. It felt ominous though, like whatever catastrophe has occurred is either the first of many, or that the thing that caused it is still in the area, still a threat.

The track “to a flame” is one of my favourites. I think it’s because it opens with, for me, a retro horror-feeling electronic melody, the kind that you might hear as the victims in a film approach the haunted house that they are about the spend the night in. A scratchy beat begins a little later, accompanied by a low vibrating tone that almost snarls into the soundscape. A short while later, a roaming, ghostly sound begins, sweeping rushes of air pushing static through the ears. This track is another ominous one, and the changes in melody that come after the midpoint only serve to ramp this feeling up even more.

The final track that I wanted to talk about is “auger spires”. This is partly because it opens with a gentle, light tone and drone, with only small hints of wind or menace. The soundscape feels resonant and pulsing, and on an emotional level, ominous, but like a moment of respite too. It caused me to think about what an out of town industrial estate is like at midnight. Wide roads, tall, hanger like buildings and expanses of concrete. Then a vibrating tone begins in the track, a shuddering impact hot on its heels. For me, this was the audio equivalent of the street lights or security lights gradually fading as something dark or evil approaches. There is a shrill tone that twists in the air, and things turn to that uneasy, apprehensive feeling once more.

If you enjoy dark ambient music with fizzing electronic tones, haunting drones and unsettling “windy night on an industrial estate after an invasion” atmospheres, you should take a closer listen to Josh Sager’s interlopers at the link below.

Visit the interlopers page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the titular track below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: interlopers

Album Artist: Josh Sager

Released: 22 Feb 2021